On and off the stage, remarkable theatre is all in the details Pine Tree Players’ participants learned at the Foothills Region One Act Play Festival over the past weekend in High River (April 6-9).
Every movement, tone, gesture, costume, prop or pause has the potential to expand a playwright’s meaning and engage the audience, adjudicator Aaron Coates of Mt. Royal College in Calgary told actors and technicians gathered to review the 12 community theatre productions staged. But it’s a fine line between peak performance and over-the-top or missing the mark.
First-time director Louise Shore of PTP’s When Shakespeare’s Ladies Meet achieved a just-right balance of all of these elements to bring home the outstanding director award, said Coates. He was delighted with Shore’s contemporary approach to Charles George’s work, calling it the Sex and the City version of what many might see as too high-brow and dated in character and language for today’s theatre-goers.
Shore deferred to the ensemble cast who embraced their roles, and backstage supporters and technicians who completely re-jigged the lighting and set just before the performance to accommodate the new space.
Theatre-goers wanting to see the PTP production as performed in High River have the opportunity, beginning April 18, as the four one-act productions The Play’s The Thing open at the Canmore Miner’s Union Hall. The performances conclude on April 28. Tickets are available at Second Story Books.
Coates then commended the six ‘ladies’ (Codie Reed, Candise McMullin, Chezlene Kocian, Nina St. James, Lauren Kepkiewicz, and Janet Kundert) of this ensemble piece for their individuality and “reaching within themselves to build distinctive, on-stage personalities.” In particular, he recognized Kocian for the fiery, yet mischievous quality she brought to her role. Kocian plays Kate from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, one of the five heroines who have gathered to advise the naive Juliet about affairs of the heart.
Coates compared the one-act play format to the short story, where the key element is character. We get a glimpse into lives and are startled or surprised into recognizing or identifying with the characters.
In Arthur Miller’s Elegy for a Lady, directed by Joe Morris, viewers are uncertain whether the action is unfolding in real time on the stage, or in the man’s head, as he deals with the impending end of a relationship. This expressionistic play has us examining our own chance connections as closely as the man (Simon Steele) and proprietress (Jodie Russell) in the shop.
The dreamlike Trouble’s just a Bubble, directed by Anita Szabo, is a play which relies on evocation, Coates said. It’s up to the actors (Elizabeth Green, Adam Zeimer and Martin Finnerty) to get us on board for this train journey in which the interaction between the young porter and abruptly rebellious matron contribute to the richness and poignancy of playwright Sheldon Oberman’s ending. Coates praised the “spare production, marvellous performances, and the great imaginative power of the actors” to evoke a scene.
Pine Tree’s final festival effort, Babel’s In Arms directed by Lawrence Hutchings, is an exploration of the art of idiocy which brought forth howls of convulsive laughter and could be pushed even further, Coates suggested. He encouraged the actors (Gerry McAuley, Luke Benson, Pam Milthorp, Candise McMullin and Hutchings, himself) to find the absolute limits of comedic timing and movement before, perhaps, backing off.
Gina Power was stage manager/technician; Jodie Russell, producer; Elizabeth Green, accommodation; Elaine Smith, wardrobe mistress and Judy Steele, staging and sets for the High River competition.
What was billed as an opportunity to grow professionally, became a road-trip bonding weekend for the 16 Pine Tree actors, technicians and crew who attended the festival. Meeting and chatting with others of one’s dramatic penchant, whether that was acting or staging, became the focus while enjoying the three-day theatre smorgasbord of the imagination.
